


Five ways Jack Harkness grieves for Ianto Jones.

by dani_the_girl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-26
Updated: 2010-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-10 19:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dani_the_girl/pseuds/dani_the_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is not simply a state, it's a process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five ways Jack Harkness grieves for Ianto Jones.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this after the end of the End of Time, when I was spittingly, incadescently angry at what I felt was a cheap throwaway portrayal of Jack after what he'd been through. I wanted to change it into something that meant something. Due to RL, this has taken a long time to write but I'm glad I did finish it.

**Denial**

Jack doesn't attend Ianto's funeral. He doesn't attend any of the funerals that take place in the aftermath of the 456 incident. He's always hated funerals anyway, saying goodbye. Ianto had hated funerals, he reminds himself. He wouldn't have wanted Jack to go anyway. Instead, Jack makes his way to Ianto's flat. They'd only spent about two nights there really. Most of the time, the Hub was more convenient, but that's gone now too. He turns on the CD player and lets whatever is in the tray play. It's just a song, nothing to do with death, nothing even remotely symbolic, but it's too much and he turns it off again. There's beer in the fridge and he drinks it all.

The next day, he's late getting into Torchwood's makeshift base of operations. He keeps looking sideways at Gwen, waiting for her to say something, to ask him where he was yesterday, but she says nothing, just takes him to look around more new potential office spaces.

**Anger**

He spends a lot of time weevil hunting. It seems like there's more of them around than ever but even that's not enough. He starts to seek them out, looking for nests. He wakes up covered in his own blood more than a few times, but he can't bring himself to care. At least it's time out. There's nowhere to take them now, so it's more violent than it used to be.

After, if he's made it through, he seeks out someone to take the edge off with. Someone who doesn't look too like. Someone who's just there for an hour or so. He needs it, he thinks, viciously. He shouldn't have been left without anyone.

**Bargaining**

He watches the cards like a hawk as she turns them over. It's taken too long to track her down, he thinks, frustrated. What if it's already too late to use what she can tell him.

"The Ace of Cups," she states, running her fingers lightly over the first card. His chest tightens. A beginning. The blossoming of something of the heart. In the past.

"The Tower." She is watching Jack intently, he notices, not looking at the cards at all. "A terrible calamity." No kidding. His jaw locked, he refuses to try to comment.

"The Five of Cups." She sits back, still looking at him. "You may wait and wait here but this one will not return to you, Captain. Eventually, you will find a way to say goodbye."

She gathers up the cards and he makes no move to stop her, turning over what she's said in his mind. OK, so if waiting is no good, that just means he has to be active. Get out there and _find_ the way to get back, to save him.

**Depression**

One bar is as good as another, he finds. They all serve drink, after all. And there's usually someone who can be found to take his mind of things for an hour or two. He surveys the clientele from the doorway. The usual space port crowd - one or two tourists slumming it or just in the wrong place, plenty of crew taking shore leave, a few locals working the crowd and then the drifters, who don't particularly need to be here but haven't the energy to take themselves somewhere more classy. His lip twists just a little. Classy bars remind him to much of Ianto, who would have enjoyed them. Dives are fairly safe.

He sits down, orders a whiskey, settles down to drink it, pondering his next move. He still hasn't found any way of crossing his own timeline again without risking too much to be safe. Too much to be sure that Ianto would forgive him for it, anyway. He finishes the drink and orders another. The bartender passes him a note.

He's been wondering when in his own timeline the Doctor was going to show up. He's heard about this from Sarah-Jane, and from Mickey. He'd considered a lot of responses for when his turn finally came, a straight punch to the jaw being perhaps his favourite, but it doesn't seem worth it now. It won't change the fact that the Doctor wouldn't take him back there if he could. Wasn't there to save Ianto. Left everything to Jack and Jack fucked it up. The Doctor's dying too and Jack finds to his surprise that he doesn't want to make that any more bitter than it needs to be. He turns to Alonso and introduces himself, jokingly, watching out of the corner of his eye as the Doctor disappears again and hopes he believes that things have been fixed.

Still, Alonso's a good kid, in his way. He doesn't seem that bothered by Jack's slightly manic flirting and the sex is not bad at all. It's what he says on his way to his next posting, three days later, that hits Jack in the solar plexus.

"Come wave me off," he asks, with a smile, getting his kit bag together.

"I don't really do goodbyes," Jack demurs, trying to make it sound light.

"Oh, come on," Alonso says cajolingly, taking his hand lightly and giving it a little tug. "A guy who won't say goodbye afterwards was never really interested in you - he was just fucking you. And you're not that guy."

Jack doesn't know how long he stands on the dock after Alonso's ship has headed out. He doesn't cry, but he's not sure how he manages that. Eventually, he turns on his heel. "Fuck the Doctor," he mutters violently, but he knows where he's going now.

**Acceptance**

"Ianto Jones was a very special person." Jack pauses to clear his throat. "Over his short life, he had to go through more than most people ever will. He dealt with fear and loss and with terror and violence without crumbling. He died taking a risk to protect thousands of people he would, could never know and who would never have thanked him but for him, the mutual thanks and support of his friends and collegues was all he asked. If there was any way we could have saved him, we would have done so gladly, but we could not prevent him from making the choice that he made, to stand up in front of something terrible and say no. Not while I have breath to prevent it. And so now the only thing we can do is to say goodbye. To recognise the greatness of his spirit and the worth of his sacrifice and to give thanks for his life."

He stands straight as the Welsh hymn plays out over the graveyard. Military bearing, he thinks. It's hard, but not as hard as he imagined it would be. The very familiarness makes it seem unreal. Another funeral, another life cut off too soon because he hadn't been able to save it. He can feel the tears, but he holds them back. They will be private. The coffin is lowered into the ground and the symbolic handfuls of Welsh mud thrown in before the rest is left to the grave diggers.

It's strange to see Gwen with almost no bump. He suddenly wonders what her baby is like, whether she's had it safely, somewhere there in the future, and knows that he'll have to go back and find out now.

"That was lovely, Jack," she tells him, and she has been crying. "Really lovely."

"Not enough," he replies, feeling the roughness in his voice.

"It never is, is it," she agrees, sadly. "Are you coming to the wake?"

"No." Right now, in Ianto's flat, his past self is cracking open the first beer of Ianto's stockpile. It would be safe to go. This day of all days, he remembers what he did last time, is taking no risk of meeting himself. "I've said goodbye, that's enough."

"Okay, cariad," she says, and he can't remember her ever calling him that before. "If that's what you want. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah," he agrees. meaninglessly, and strides away over the graveyard. Maybe not tomorrow, for him, but soon, he thinks, a little surprised. Soon.


End file.
